Introduction: Half Baked Thematthatter Cow Pies

Named for someone that stands in combat boots waist deep dealing with bul bureaucracy all day long making sure things are safe to eat.  Here is a field expedient recipe that really doesn't require baking at all. Actually the opposite, refrigerating things down to the optimal safe holding temperature between 35 to 38 degrees F.

Make this delectable pudding pie from store bought ingredients and packed with the wholesome goodness of pure grade A milk. Contains enough refined sugar  to down a cow after a sugar high.

Moooooo...

CAUTION: Preparation involves a lot of stuff in the kitchen and guaranteed to make a mess.  Clean up thoroughly and sanitize afterwards.  Allergy warning:  This ible may have been processed by someone who may be nuts.

Step 1: Great Stuff...

Grab a bunch of things that may already be in your pantry.

You need two different kinds of cookies, dark chocolate colored and light vanilla cookies.  Mine are the regular creme-filled in the middle sandwich cookies.

Chocolate pudding mix or a light color pudding mix that you can color with the addition of cocoa powder.

Butter

Milk to prepare the pudding mix.

To make the custom formed pie plate:

cardboard

glue

paper

tinfoil, the same stuff you can use to make hats

refrigerator to chill the product

True homemakers or chefs can use homemade or from scratch ingredients.  You can then guarantee you are getting fresh but then again, I am not a master baker.  

Step 2: Get in Shape...

Print out a cow silhouette from the internet or just try to sketch it freehand on paper.  I just arbitrarily made it fit to one page. 

Cow shapes look like polar bears.  What do I know, I am a city slicker.

A normal pie plate is about 9 inches in diameter, so...

Cut that out to use as a template for your cardboard pieces.

Cut out pieces of cardboard to laminate into the 3 dimensional shape of the cow.

Glue all the layers together and weigh down until dry.

I had about 6 or 8 layers, depending on the thickness of your corrugated cardboard.

You can also piece together little pieces of cardboard. and trim to shape.

Use something hard to burnish the edges flat and even.

Do a light papier mache to cover the rough edges.  Not really necessary but hey, my hands were all messy with glue anyway.

I used some newspaper fliers as my paper stock but you can use clean typing paper if you are worried about food contact from the any soluble soy based inks leaching from the newsprint.

Step 3: If It Pans Out...

Take your cow shaped block and cover it with plastic wrap.

Lay it out in the center of your work surface and cover with a large piece of heavy duty tin foil (alilumuniminum for our UK friends)

Gather and press down the foil to conform to the shape of the block.

Repeat with another 3 layers of foil.

Gather up the edges and roll in the excess pressing the formed lip up to the edges of the block.

Remove the shape block and smooth out the molded pie plate.

You will want to round out any inside edges so the pie will release easier if you are flipping it out of the plate later on.

You could try forming with one of those disposable pie tins but it is harder to work the stiffer material into these random shapes.

Step 4: Cookie Monster...

Things get crusty from here in.

Take a batch of maybe 10 or so cookies.

Seal them in a tough plastic bag.

Beat the heck out of them.  I used a meat mallet to crush the cookies.  They were pulverized with the blunt instrument side of the tool. The milled face would have tore the bag apart making a mess. By the way, keep one handy behind the door for those unannounced visitors that won't go away. 

You could also use a food processor but setting up and cleaning that piece of equipment would be a chore.

You can grind up the cookies with the creme filling and all.  Actually, I should have scraped out some of the filling beforehand since it made the crust so sweet.  Your taste may vary.

Depending on how you like the texture of your crust, keep on processing the cookies to a sandy texture. The finer the grind, the better it will form the crust.

Melt about a quarter to a half stick of butter.  This "wets" the cookie crumbs so that they will stick together for your crust.

Mix the cookie crumbs with the melted butter.

Make a separate batch for each of the two cookie colors.

Randomly lay portions of one color crumb first and then fill in the rest with  the other cookie crust crumbs to form the complete crust. I guess this is kinda like genetically engineering the cow that you will have.

Press into the pie plate and shape with your fingers or the back of a spoon.

Bring up the crust to the sides of the pan.

You can throw it into the fridge to firm up a bit as you make the pudding filling.

Step 5: Pudding It to Da Man...

There's always room for pudding.

You can also fill with ice cream for an ice cream cake. Fudgy the whale cow anyone?

2 normal cups is about 3/4 of my normal coffee mug.  Add two cups of cold milk to the mix and mix.

If you want more of the chocolate cow and don't want to break out a new box of chocolate pudding mix, just add cocoa powder to the light colored pudding.

I just mixed vigorously with a fork for a few minutes.  It might be easier with a whisk but more pudding gets stuck to the tines.

Throw in a big glop of Cool Whip dessert topping.  I don't think it really added much to the stiffness or creaminess of the pudding so you can omit it if you don't have it on hand.  It essentially only boosts up the stabilizer/preservatives in your pudding mix.

Fill portions of the cow with the light colored pudding and the chocolate pudding.

You can then dust with more cocoa powder or even put a layer of cookie crumbs to make a top crust if serving upside down.

Put into the refrigerator for an hour or more to set the pudding.

Step 6: Cow Tipping...

How now, brown cow?

Serve straight out of tinfoil corral or invert over a serving plate large enough to hold the cow pie.

Enjoy!

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